When I graduate in July, I will have been a Cambridge student for 1,072 days. For 379 of those days, I had an ongoing ‘sexual misconduct’ case with the University’s Office of Student Conduct, Complaints and Appeals (OSCCA).
Halfway through my degree, I was sexually assaulted in the middle of a busy LGBT+ bop at another college. I was approached from behind, restrained, and assaulted. The perpetrator was a student I did not know dressed in a suit, university sports club tie, and his college scarf. His friends watched it happen. To my knowledge, none of them came forward to give evidence.
About a week after the incident, I learned that the OSCCA process would take months if not years; they wait for the police to finish their investigation before taking any action. Excessive delays in police investigations and court backlogs mean many investigations for sexual offences often do take years. The OSCCA policy therefore leads to drawn-out investigations with little protection for victims beyond a no-contact order.
A couple of weeks after the assault, I went to the police station to give my statement. This was done in a cold, dark suspect interview room. Each wall had a sticker that read ‘Warning: Asbestos’. I cried as I recalled the incident over and over to the counter-terrorism police officer tasked with taking my statement. The officer referred to the assault as ‘the boob-grabbing’ and rejected my repeated requests to describe it as a homophobic hate crime.
About two months later, the police rang me and told me that the perpetrator was sorry if he had upset me and that it wasn’t a hate crime because his girlfriend is bisexual and he has gay people in his family. It was explained to me that the perpetrator’s defence was that he was concussed.
“I lived in fear of seeing my assaulter out in public”
I got really ill after that. The nightmares and flashbacks escalated. I stopped leaving my room and didn’t open my curtains for weeks. I lived in fear of seeing my assaulter out in public. I did, twice.
Meanwhile, I was supposed to be preparing for exams. It was hard to devote myself to revising statistics and social theory when I had an active sexual assault case. I had Quizlet open in one tab, and the Victims’ Code in another.
Four and a half months after the assault, I was told that the police had decided to pursue a police caution rather than prepare the case for court. The caution meant that the case would not go to court, but instead the perpetrator admitted guilt and would be a registered sex offender for two years. I was told the caution required the perpetrator to write a meaningful letter of apology. When I said I didn’t want this, the police said it would be written anyway but that I didn’t have to receive it.
The caution wasn’t signed for another month and a half. While interning over the summer, I checked for emails from the police every morning on my commute and spent my evenings writing follow-ups. When it was finally signed, I notified the OSCCA investigators so that their investigation could start.
“I had been stripped of agency, privacy, and energy”
I was sitting on the floor of my childhood bedroom when I was diagnosed with PTSD, just a few days before coming back to Cambridge for my final year. Around the same time, I received the apology letter from the perpetrator. It explained that he would not be returning to Cambridge because he had failed his exams. I was told that the OSCCA process could still go ahead despite this. They had the power to prevent the perpetrator from re-applying so it felt worthwhile to continue my push for justice.
The first term of my final year was still massively controlled by PTSD. I’d feel totally fine and then it was like a switch flipped and suddenly I’d be at the event being assaulted, or at the police station, or having X-Rays at the hospital.
I still think about the assault all the time. Every time someone asks if I like Cambridge. Every time I go past the college where it happened. Every time I scroll past the ‘sexual assault’ folder on my laptop. Every time policing is mentioned in my lectures. Sometimes I’m not thinking about it and then an email about it lands in my inbox without warning. Another update, another change, more evidence required.
Nine months on, I had a long meeting with the OSCCA investigator about the impact of the incident on me. I spoke about how I had been stripped of agency, privacy, and energy. I spoke about the police mishandling the case and what it was like having PTSD. At the end, the investigator explained that nothing I had said could be used as evidence for the decision unless I agreed that the perpetrator could read it. I said that I would have liked to have been told that earlier. They just nodded.
“My university experience was forever changed when I was assaulted, but it was distorted further by the institutional failures to tackle sexual violence”
People often commend me as brave for waiving my right to anonymity by talking about the assault. But I didn’t have anonymity. The OSCCA process offered up every shred of my personal information to the person I would least want to know it.
It was three further months until I received the report. The year anniversary passed before I received the outcome. 379 days after the assault I received the OSCCA decision. My whole body shook as I read the final report. It contained details about my mental health and my medications. It covered my life before the assault, what therapy I’d received and when, my relationships, and my reflections on the damage the police process did to me. It contained details I haven’t even shared with my closest friends. And the decision? No further action. Victims cannot appeal an OSCCA decision, but perpetrators can.
I am rebuilding my life. I started para-athletics in October to help manage PTSD and I have found real fulfilment in it. I’m good at knitting now and recently I’ve been opening my curtains every day. In July, I will graduate. For a while, that didn’t seem likely.
“I don’t think you should have to be strong to report sexual violence; I don’t think it should harden you”
My university experience was forever changed when I was assaulted, but it was distorted further by the institutional failures to tackle sexual violence and apprehend perpetrators at this university. I am one of the lucky ones. My assault was public and the perpetrator was a stranger. When the perpetrator claimed that he “could only imagine that he could have fallen on [me],” it was easy to disprove. The perpetrator left before OSCCA could refuse to expel him. But even in my case, I was let down.
I deserved better from Cambridge. I deserved better than 12 months of waiting, than my assault being labelled ‘misconduct’, than being re-traumatised, than uncertainty and inaction. I deserved the right to appeal. In his apology letter, the perpetrator told me that he knows “things will never be the same again”. At times I wondered if the OSCCA investigators understood this: that my university experience – so formative and fleeting – had been permanently marred by the assault and everything that followed.
I am often praised for my strength in seeing the reporting process to completion. I don’t think you should have to be strong to report sexual violence; I don’t think it should harden you.
Sometimes I look at my CamCard and I see my 17-year-old self looking back at me. I wonder what she would say about all this. Or what I would say to her. That bright, funny, ambitious teenager who couldn’t wait for university. I think about how her degree certificate will harbour the name of the University that failed her. I wouldn’t know where to begin.
